Google launches AMP for email - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/26/google-makes-emails-more-dynamic-with-amp-for-email/ <comment><USER2> We couldn't stop it. :|

Back when it was announced, several people brought concerns up with the supposedly open AMP project, and they were closed or locked, and the head of AMP blocked us. During that time, we found out that while AMP was supposedly "open", Google teams such as Gmail and Search would implement it however they wanted, and that no open governance would impact them at all. In essence, the idea that it was open was only so far as Google would also like you to implement whatever Google was already doing.

<comment><USER3> The spec has support from Outlook, Yahoo and others: [https://blog.amp.dev/2019/03/26/building-the-future-of- email...](https://blog.amp.dev/2019/03/26/building-the-future-of-email-with- amp/)

<comment><USER4> The future of email should be a deprecation of email. Email is an archaic system, where different clients implement their own versions of rendering or sanitizing email. Some platforms don't even include proper email headers. Now there's this 'AMP' that's being shoved up our throats. Not to mention the nuances around deliverability like spf records and dkim. There's also the issue of spam.

I'd love to see email go away and more modern messaging platforms take its place. Having worked on apps and platforms that work with and parse email, email is not the future.

<comment><USER5> > Email is an archaic system, where different clients implement their own > versions of rendering

As opposed to web browsers which all perform identically?

<comment><USER6> Nah mate, the web's fine now because everything's Chrome or a reskin of Chromium.

/s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At this point, I'm convinced google are actively harmful to the internet.

Trying to centralise as much of the internet and how people interact with it under their control is dangerous and open to widespread abuse - and this is already happening.

See:

YouTube demonetisation

YouTube content ID abuse

Chrome extension changes

Gmail is already completely broken on IMAP unless clients throw in google specific workarounds, and now they're moving on to break the next layer of email too.

Joy.

<comment><USER8> ReCAPTCHA is especially brutal if you aren't logged in to Google and are using Firefox. They make you do challenge after challenge after challenge and s-l-o- w-l-y fade in pictures as extra punishment. I've stopped using some sites because of it.

<comment><USER9> This is not necessarily Firefox, but because reCAPTCHA is designed to be more frictionless if Google can identify the user.

If you have their tracking cookies, if you don't use a VPN, and if you block ads (which would have more tracking cookies), Google's certainty of who you are is higher, increasing the chance that you are a human.

Firefox's default settings, especially with the new Content Blocking features, are enough for reCAPTCHA to be less sure you're a human, and try to make you prove it more often.

So Google manages to sell a product (reCAPTCHA), show good intentions (bot- prevention), increase usage of Chrome (because it's a smoother experience through reCAPTCHA), and get more information on everyone.

Win x4

<comment><USER10> Google seems to have intentionally tuned reCAPTCHA to punish anyone who isn't a Google customer or is blocking Google's tracking cookies. This is a win for nobody except Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I started transitioning away from Gmail (to Fastmail) last fall, forwarding my gmail and using a signature asking people to update their address book. This is a good day to make the hard cutoff.

One strategy for explaining the problem to non-technical people is by comparing regular email to the walled-garden email used by some banks, phone companies, and the like--where you have to log into their website to see your 'inbox' and use a web form to send messages. It's super annoying and the other party has complete control of the communication channel.

"Dynamic email" could be implemented to inject this kludge into your email client, giving the AMP sender (who likely has more power than the user) the same level of control over the channel. Imagine opening your email client and finding a message which asks for two security questions and a captcha, then lands you in a messaging interface which limits you to 200 characters and denies basic affordances of email like archiving and forwarding.

I find the arguments that email is already mutable because images are externally-loaded unpersuasive. In 2013 Google started caching images in gmail "to protect you from unknown senders who might try to use images to compromise the security of your computer." [1] Email marketers were upset at losing engagement metrics. Now a practice that used to be considered abuse is being rolled out as a feature.

[1] [https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/12/images-now- showing.html](https://gmail.googleblog.com/2013/12/images-now-showing.html)

<comment><USER12> Did the same thing a few weeks ago. The original reasons were that gmail was incredibly slow in FF, and I wasn't really comfortable with Google reading my mail.

People point out that the email is read by an automated system, but that doesn't change the fact that Google is building a profile of me and selling it to advertisers.

With Fastmail there's a business model I can understand. I pay them money and they provide me a service.

The really dark side of all this is that we're quickly moving towards a world where you only get privacy if you can afford it.

<comment><USER13> >> I wasn't really comfortable with Google reading my mail.

Neither G Suite Gmail nor regular Gmail have been used and/or scanned for ads personalisation since back in 2017: [https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction- in...](https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the- enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/)

<comment><USER12> Even if they stopped using the data for ad personalisation, they're obviously still scanning it. The new auto reply suggestions feature relies on that. While they might not be using that data for anything nefarious at the moment, there's nothing stopping them from changing their mind in the future.

Personally, I just feel more comfortable paying 4 bucks a month to a company that isn't trying to monetize me.

<comment><USER13> correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't every email service scan emails? be it for spam, security, viruses. they have to scan them. i thought this is standard industry practice.

<comment><USER12> Typically, that's based on the email metadata such as the sender address, or mime types of the attachments as opposed to the actual content of the email.

<comment><USER14> I think that's only correct as of like 1995.

Even simple tools like spam assassin read the body, and you can bet that almost any public provider is doing more than spam assassin.

<comment><USER15> But they do not sell it or analyze it for advertising...

<comment><USER14> Neither does Google.

<comment><USER15> So you think Google gives it for free? Thought it is common sense: If you are not paying for it, you are the product.

<comment><USER14> There are ads on Gmail. They just aren't based on emails.

Not to mention all kinds of actually free services. Think colab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have hated AMP for the web with a passion. The other day I did a google search, started reading an article, and all of a sudden, I saw a little floating alert at the bottom saying "signed in to google" and I was quite alarmed by it, as I hadn't realized I had clicked on an AMP link. So an article that had nothing to do with google, kept me on a google property, and caused me to log in to google. So now I'm associated with that article.

These companies desperately need to be chopped up and have severe data sharing restrictions put on them. They're much more invasive than Microsoft ever was in the 90s.

<comment><USER17> Would you not be "associated with that article" regardless? You clicked the link, and that action is a tracked conversion regardless of destination.

<comment><USER18> I don't want my link-clicking actions to be tracked.

<comment><USER19> That's going to be very hard to fix.

In order for your link-click to be resolved your computer has to send some packets and tell _somebody_ that you want a piece of content. _Somebody_ has to give you that content. Unless you're using tor (really, even if you're using tor), these are actions with physical manifestations which can be tracked.

<comment><USER18> Right, I mean, I'm fine with Example co knowing that I opened example.com/somepage. I don't want a search engine to know whether I navigated there from a search result, and I don't want Example co to know where I navigated from or whether I typed the URL manually into my browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A few months ago when I moved I set up my network to DNS blackhole known Tracker's and Ad serving sites. Since then I have gotten more complaints about people not being able to use email since it turns out almost every email I get today is laced with tracking of some sort. I do not want any more smarts in my emails, I just want text that gets sent back and forth. I know this article claims this will help "Get things done", but I feel it will just be used to track and sell things to me even more then people currently try to.

<comment><USER21> What's the technical explanation for that? I don't understand how that would prevent e-mail from being "used".

Presumably people aren't sending e-mails to domains that belong to trackers/ads? Otherwise I don't see what the problem would be.

<comment><USER22> Look at the URLs in emails from big companies. A ton of them go through a click-tracker first so if the tracker fails you can't follow the link.

<comment><USER20> Its not even big companies any more. All the tools that help people send out group emails ( so things like invites to dinner parties, or birthday parties, or sign up lists for school snack duty )

<comment><USER22> Big companies wasn't the right term: I would class what you mentioned in the same bucket I had in mind, which was more like "places which use marketing tools" – the local parents group might not build their own system but they're pretty likely to be using one because the cost is low and everyone wants to have statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As best I can tell there's no way for individuals to send amp emails. In order for gmail to accept an amp email it's sender must first register [1]. Registration comes with a couple requirements, one of which is a "Consistent history of sending a high volume of mail from your domain (order of hundred emails a day minimum to Gmail) for a few weeks at least."

This is so contrary to how anything else on the web works that I feel I must have missed something. Their "standard" is not available to individual developers. Only those who are already sending lots of mail may play. This is far worse than how web sites have slowly become more opaque so that it's now harder to learn how to develop them. It's simply not possible to play around with this new medium.

The open web is no more.

[1]: [https://developers.google.com/gmail/ampemail/register](https://developers.google.com/gmail/ampemail/register)

<comment><USER23> > As best I can tell there's no way for individuals to send amp emails

I researched this a bit. Here's the scoop: right now, GMail is trialling AMP emails and are limiting that trial to entities that send out lots of emails. Post-trial, the intention is to allow anyone to send AMP emails.

However, other major email services that have hopped onto this bandwagon are not limiting the use of AMP emails this way.

So it's not true that there's no way for individuals to send AMP emails. It's true for GMail specifically, but even there, that's a temporary limitation.

<comment><USER19> nice, thanks for doing this research! Do you have anything I could read which says they'll open this up?

<comment><USER23> Yes. The limitation to the use by major email senders is during the developer preview. According to this, Google plans to end the preview and release to the general public this fall: [https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/bringing- power-amp-...](https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/bringing-power-amp- gmail/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hope nobody will be mislead of the reasons google released AMP and AMP for email. It have nothing to do with performance(for AMP) or interactivity(amp4email) and more with establishing a vendor wallgarden.

The standard is "open like in openxml" \- there's a technical commitee, but your input will not be heard.

<comment><USER25> > there's a technical commitee, but your input will not be heard.

What makes you think input won't be heard?

<comment><USER26> When have your web people ever listened to input? Not Web Audio, not 'autoplay' banning, not AMP, not NPAPI, that's for sure. I was on the Chrome team and your leadership still told me to pound sand. Your leadership deserve nothing but contempt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It probably enables nice use cases but I hope it does not spread too much.

Major features an email have:

\- it does not change (except for external resources, which are blocked by default anyway),

\- works offline,

\- can be read in ten years just fine.

I want my mails to remain static and available and I don't think I'm okay with them running some uncontrolled code.

</comment><comment><USER24> There may be some technical grievances with the standard too.

[https://postmaster.mail.ru/amp/playground.html](https://postmaster.mail.ru/amp/playground.html)

How they forget there's <style media="..."> and came up with this html non- conformant markup?

`<style amp4email-boilerplate>body{visibility:hidden}</style>`

New templating standard directly in html? They decided not to use DOM or components but just text, damaging the ability to transform the page in runtime and requiring backend processing?

` {{#cart_items}} {{/cart_items}}

{{^cart_items}} {{/cart_items}} `

And amp4email starts with `<html 4email>`, with the emoji? seriously? [I cannot even insert this emoji here at HN]

And regarding the tools... AMP-viewer... Can you actually check if there is anything implemented? i'm perplexed with [https://github.com/ampproject/amp- viewer/tree/master/mobile-...](https://github.com/ampproject/amp- viewer/tree/master/mobile-web) \- its only 4 source files with no logic inside, last commit 6 months ago... and all its supposedly do is generate iframe with mangled url pointing to amp-project website "[https://www- ampproject-org.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.amppro...](https://www-ampproject- org.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.ampproject.org/?amp_js_v=0.1#origin=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A8000") ? So all the AMP processing is walled out in a propietary service?

And the other amp-viewer mentioned at [https://www.ampproject.org/docs/integration/integrate- amphtm...](https://www.ampproject.org/docs/integration/integrate-amphtml- email) redirects to google corp portal?

[https://g3doc.corp.google.com/java/com/google/gws/plugins/am...](https://g3doc.corp.google.com/java/com/google/gws/plugins/amp/g3doc/index.md?cl=head)

<comment><USER28> > And amp4email starts with `<html 4email>`, with the emoji? seriously? [I > cannot even insert this emoji here at HN]

I think I know why they're doing this, actually. It's a clever way of ensuring that any services that send, receive, or interact with AMP mail are Unicode- safe. If they can't include a U+26A1 ("HIGH VOLTAGE SIGN") character in the AMP markup, they'll probably mangle any other non-Latin text too.

<comment><USER29> It was brought up a long time ago that it was not valid HTML around the earlier days of the AMP project - [https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/472](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/472)

It was kept in because it is fun, apparently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This feels like a gigantic separation of concerns violation. Why the hell should amp have anything to do with email? What are the advantages over just normal markup besides proprietary features each vendor shovels on-top of the "open" standard?

... _sigh_ AMP is the one thing I really, really, despise from Google and it just continues to spread.

<comment><USER31> It looks like they're leveraging the safety aspect of AMP here. IIUC, the subset of HTML behavior AMP enables is generally considered to be "safe." If that property can hold, AMP-enabled email can allow for the benefits of live HTML in the client without the drawbacks of the surprises that can occur from arbitrary HTML execution.

<comment><USER32> Does AMP not allow JavaScript?

<comment><USER31> AMP gates the JavaScript it allows and requires asynchronous evaluation. 3rd party JS is also allowed, but it has to be in a sandboxed iframe which, in a browser at least, would guard some of the user's state from exfiltration attacks (it's unclear to me if the iframe feature is available in email AMP).

[https://www.ampproject.org/learn/about- how/](https://www.ampproject.org/learn/about-how/)

<comment><USER25> Emails only support a subset of AMP, so iframes and any form of JavaScript (other than the whitelisted AMP components) are not allowed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Pretty classic Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. I expect nothing will render right in Thunderbird pretty soon.

<comment><USER34> emails are packages with different representations in it. You have the classic "plantext" version and "html" version in emails today. What this is doing is adding another one to it.

Mutt, for instance, discards "html" and renders just the "plaintext" version. AMP emails would just be another part of the same email. Nothing would stop working.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, but messing with email is scary. Email is still an open platform and if Google gets complete control of it then there is no open platform that people actually use.

<comment><USER36> AMP including AMP for email is governed by a multi-company Technical Steering Committee as well as Advisory Committee since last year. [https://blog.amp.dev/2019/03/06/encouraging-more-voices- in-a...](https://blog.amp.dev/2019/03/06/encouraging-more-voices-in-amp/)

AMP for email has support by Outlook, Yahoo, and Mail.ru, so it very much isn't under Google's control.

<comment><USER37> Looking at their technical steering committee, 3 out of 7 members are from Google, with only one from a company of what I would consider equivalent pull (Microsoft).

[https://github.com/ampproject/meta-tsc](https://github.com/ampproject/meta- tsc)

I would hardly consider Yahoo to be a leader in anything at this point, not sure about mail.ru. From an outsider's perspective AMP looks Google controlled.

It looks like from your comment history you are part of Google's AMP team. It would be nice to disclose that.

<comment><USER36> Yahoo is a BIG email client.

The TSC requires majority consensus. Google does not have a majority.

<comment><USER38> Google's three plus any one other member does, though.

<comment><USER36> Yes, but you know, that isn't Google controlling it and these are all member from major internet companies that won't take part in such a "conspiracy".

<comment><USER39> Why does Google have three members then?

<comment><USER36> Because we do the majority of the work. The governance body size will, however, expand with further non-Google members. So, the hypothetical "you just have to convince only one" is becoming less of an issue over time.

<comment> X-Istence ^ cramforce works for Google on AMP.

<comment><USER40> Of course it's always the benevolent Google ramming down their network down our throats. How would AMP bans work? You can't even read any email in any client?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> There's a simple thing Google could do to convince me that their intentions with AMP are honorable: make it possible to turn it off.

EDIT, to be clear: for Google search results.

<comment><USER42> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something but how can a standard be turned on and off? Can't you just not implement it? Or do you mean Google Search shouldn't show AMP pages?

<comment><USER43> When I swipe right on my Pixel 2 to get to the Google Now news feed, any article I click on opens the AMP version.

It's great when I'm on the light rail going through areas with patchy cell signal, but when an article's share buttons are broken because it's the AMP version it's a pain to figure out how to navigate to the non-AMP version of the article.

A couple news sources (usually technical ones) thankfully put a link to the non-AMP version somewhere on the page, but IMHO this should be automatically done for every AMP link opened.

<comment><USER44> > _A couple news sources (usually technical ones) thankfully put a link to the > non-AMP version somewhere on the page, but IMHO this should be automatically > done for every AMP link opened._

That is available in the standard markup, so it should maybe just be added to the UI (in the ellipsis menu probably).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Great! Now I get the web interface I thoroughly despise viewing on my phone browser delivered directly to my mail client!

Puke.

I have been strongly considering migrating off of G Suite for my domains, files, and emails. Maybe it's time I bite the bullet rather than keep using a product I have to actively fight to use.

<comment><USER46> I too have considered leaving gmail for good. It seems like a bit of a process which I don't really know how to go about it and where to turn to but would love to do.

<comment><USER2> First and foremost, I recommend everyone own their email address. That means getting a domain name. I switched from using a gmail.com address to an address at my own domain (I use inbox at mydomainname.com as my main address) over a period of about a year and a half, where my new email address was forwarded to Gmail, but I regularly updated various accounts to use my new address.

Then, when I changed the redirect to point to a new service (FastMail), most of my email came with immediately. There's some secondary advantages to this. Not only can you switch providers at the drop of a hat, but you can control your address even if you get banned or blocked by the email provider.

If you have, say, a gmail.com address, and your Gmail account gets terminated, you may lose access to all of your other accounts across the Internet as well, since you won't be able to access the email they're connected to. But if you own the domain, and it's forwarded to gmail.com, you can redirect the domain to another email provider, and send a new reset email to regain access to your other accounts.

<comment><USER47> This seems like a really good idea. Do you have any suggestions for a hosted email client similar to Gmail as well?

<comment><USER2> As I said above, I'm pretty taken with FastMail. It's got an incredibly zippy web client, which I value a lot. Besides the privacy aspect, they just have a better product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> > The promise of AMP for Email is that it'll turn basic messages into a > surface for actually getting things done.

Oh god no, please don't turn email into a "surface."

> That means you'll be able to do [x, y, z] right from the message, all > without leaving your web-based email client.

Quit. Gmail.

Why are so many technical users still on this gross platform that is turning the earliest, most successful decentralized internet protocol into a walled surveillance advertiser garden?

If you use gmail, go register a domain and point your MX records at an honest mail provider like Fastmail, Posteo, or Kolabnow. Or run your own mail server. This way your mail provider is hidden behind your domain and you can change it in the future if desired.

Seriously, stop reading hacker news for a second and make today the day you start migrating away from Google.

<comment><USER49> > If you use gmail, go register a domain and point your MX

Simpler. Use outlook.com or icloud.com or tens of other email providers that are not an advertising company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Google tries really hard to get me to leave. Gmail is already unusable on the web. Google Calendar now has background images to events I cant turn off. GCM doesnt notify me when I get emails on android unless I wake the phone. I really dont want to go to Apple but what's keeping me using anything Google beyond search?

<comment><USER51> > Gmail is already unusable on the web.

The Basic HTML version is the best and snappiest version, by far. Still exists. Even on Google's own Fiber service I have plenty of time when trying to load any other version to click the "slow? try basic HTML" link in the bottom right, and then you can set it as your default.

I'll be leaving anyway with this Amp crap, but there's still work email. Basic HTML is the way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> If you use Google's E-mail service (directly or through Google Apps), you no longer own your E-mail. It is the property of an advertising company that will do with it whatever it sees fit, including reading it, learning from it, modifying it and hiding some of it from you.

This needs to be explained to people, as most still think that Gmail just displays all of your private E-mail with a nice interface, FOR FREE!

The "FOR FREE" part is really the killer, I found that people are amazingly resistant to the idea of paying anything for E-mail, even if compared to their other utilities (power, water, internet, TV?) it is extremely cheap.

<comment><USER25> Ads in Gmail are not related to your emails: [https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603)

<comment><USER53> At the moment they aren't, but they used to be and very well could be again in the future. Also, that link says nothing about Google not "reading it, learning from it, modifying it and hiding some of it from you", when it comes to your emails, which is GPs stated concern.

Google still saves and parses every email it gets and likely uses that data for a number of purposes. No longer directly targeting Gmail ads with it really doesn't do much for people who are concerned about Google and privacy issues.

<comment><USER14> >Google still saves and parses every email it gets and likely uses that data for a number of purposes.

Sure, but so does literally every email provider. Storing your email and spam classification are pretty much the two biggest features an email provider can provide.

This is like objections to "algorithms" or "chemicals".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What was so bad about just following links from an e-mail to a website? Looks like this will be quite a boon to scammers. I wonder what creative uses they'll come up with.

There are some ingrained expectations in people when it comes to e-mail that will now be violated, so there's a great opportunity to abuse this.

<comment><USER2> As difficult as it's been to get people to look for the correct URL in the address bar of a browser, a good number of people are (relatively) aware of basic steps to ensure they are not being phished. Not clicking on links in emails, and going to the sites directly is a common strategy.

By default, most email clients hide the header information needed to determine whether or not an email came from the address it claims to, including Gmail. I suspect we're going to see a lot of phishing emails that ask you to input sensitive data right into your email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The last thing I need is for my email to become more like the web. I want my email to become even _less_ like the web.

</comment><comment><USER56> Email needs to be even simpler than it currently is, not more complex.

These AMP emails sound like a they are going to be a huge headache. "RSVP straight from the email!!" Yeah, and when that doesn't work am I stuck?

<comment><USER57> Yes, RSVP directly from the email I forwarded you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Oh boy, can't wait to see how this fractures the email landscape when Google inevitably abandons it 3-5 years from now. </snark>

<comment><USER23> AMP email itself will fracture the email landscape anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> "email has largely stayed the same with static messages that eventually go out of date"

It's amazing how reality is completely the opposite of what they are saying. I can still read a text email sent in 1999. No way an interactive AMP email will still work in 20 years.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'll still use only plain-text, GPG-signed email.

</comment><comment><USER61> Email is the last massively used open and independent communication system on the Internet. Unfortunately, many irresponsible users allowed Google to monopolize it by flocking to Gmail, and now Google is taking advantage of their position.

</comment><comment><USER62> The last thing I need in Google's already unusable web interface is a "more dynamic" experience. Ever since the Gmail "update", it regularly takes me 45+ seconds on a 60MBps connection to just _load_ my inbox.

<comment><USER63> I wonder why this happens? Both gmail and Google drive loads so slow for me. They cant make this right?

<comment><USER64> I don't know why, but Gmail and Google Drive loads significantly faster on Chrome compare to Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Can anyone explain to me why HTML inside email is not working for these use cases, and why we need a new standard if HTML powers these things on the web?

<comment><USER66> Because HTML in emails is a notoriously painful process to get working even remotely well.

Not all email providers support HTML in the same way. Some examples:

* At one point Gmail did not support style tags and all styles had to be inline. * Outlook for years used the Word HTML processor which had all sorts of limitations. Hell to get a button you had to create it in VML and put a conditional "if Microsoft do this" on it. * Some (up until a few years ago) versions of Outlook ignore either padding/margin on CSS (forget which one) * In order to layout your email so that it works across all clients, forget about using anything remotely modern. You have to use tables everywhere like it's 2000 all over again.

I'm probably forgetting a bunch, it's been a couple years since I had to deal with it.

With all these issues, adding yet another thing onto it is just asking for pain.

<comment><USER40> >Not all email providers support HTML in the same way.

Excellent. Let's introduce one more standard.

<comment><USER67> yes BUT like it or not this standard has the backing of the defacto ruler of the consumer email space - gmail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Do any of the providers that support this atrocity have a setting to turn it off?

</comment><comment><USER69> Haven't read the full article yet, but I'd like to note that ~20 years ago a now-defunct company tried to put to market something similar. The product name was, IMS, "Zaplets": the idea was to have html mails with Java applets embedded, so you could for example send an email with a "poll Zaplet" that would work more or less like a Doodle poll - restricted to the email receivers. And if you were one of them, you could periodically open the original email again and see the dynamic zaplet content with all the changes that had been applied in the meantime.

(I used these a bit to coordinate small stuff in a project I was working on, mostly for the novelty value).

The company was soon acquired by some other bigger company, and the Zaplet concept was shelved for good.

See: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-new-kind-of- email/](https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-new-kind-of-email/)

</comment><comment><USER70> The actual announcement:

[https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/03/dynamic- email-i...](https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/03/dynamic-email-in- gmail-beta.html)

</comment><comment><USER71> Ah the latest totally definitely not evil move.

</comment><comment><USER72> I'd be more supportive of this if it standardized (and mandated) unsubscribe links.

Email would be less of a hassle if I could just unsubscribe from many things in a standardized way within the email client itself.

<comment><USER73> That already exists: `List-Unsubscribe` since 1998,RFC 2369.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Making it mandatory would help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Let this fail like google+ is all I have to say.

<comment><USER75> Make it fail. I'm going to flag as SPAM any mail that comes with AMP in it.

<comment><USER40> Until google bans your account and everything holy related to it for "click fraud"

<comment><USER76> Ill take that risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Looking into switching to Fastmail. Google hasn't been friendly for years and it's finally time.

Before I pull the trigger, anyone have a better service than Fastmail to recommend?

<comment><USER78> No it pretty much just works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> One important clarification since the question comes up often. AMP for email doesn't make emails inherently mutable.

Emails already support updating by including external image references inside the email. Allowing this is a choice of the client.

AMP for email makes JSON requests proxied by the email client. Your client can decide to only make these requests once and then keep them stable or to show you a version history of the state of your email upon every time you opened it.

<comment><USER79> What? My email client has to connect according to what a message says?

That is crazy, man.

NB: Not blaming you, just shocked.

<comment><USER36> Nah, it would typically include all info known at send time, but it can see if there is updated data on email open time.

E.g. when you open a notification email from GitHub, the email can tell you that since it was sent, there are now additional comments to consider.

<comment><USER79> Ok, but a sufficiently bad constructed message woul force me to do something to retrieve interesting "actual" content? That is what seems wrong.

<comment><USER36> That email would probably otherwise just contain a link. It really doesn't make a difference.

Clients can (and do) use trust scoring to activate AMP in emails. Right now they use the same model that would allow loading images by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> So.. google wave is back?

AMP: [https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Dynamic- Ma...](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Dynamic- Mail_Docs.gif)

Wave: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzuuWZPaXc&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzuuWZPaXc&feature=youtu.be&t=25)

</comment><comment><USER81> Getting a template to render probably across all clients (assuming you're working with more than just text) is already a rat king of client implementations, HTML specs etc. Some versions of Outlook, for example, use the MS Word rendering engine which forces you to rely on a pattern of inline comment conditionals to even get markup and styling to not break the entire message. Mobile email clients add another dimension of concerns. Worst of all, you can't undo or fix emails that are already in the wild so the consequence of errors can sometimes be catastrophic (broken unsub links, incorrect ESP merge variables, etc.)

That said, the problem is not email. Email is just fine. The problem is people using email to solve problems that email was not designed to solve, namely marketing. With this move, Google is adding a considerable amount of fuel to the fire. Can't say that I'm a fan of this, as cool as the features may sound on a surface level.

</comment><comment><USER82> Anyone remember FireDrop/Zaplets?

[https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2000/0612/6514218a.html#58b1f3...](https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2000/0612/6514218a.html#58b1f30c57dc)

Interactive emails, powered by HTML/Javascript, in 2000! What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER83> I'm assuming that Google killed the Inbox app died because they didn't want to implement this? Ugh.

</comment><comment><USER84> I'm always disappointed there is no standard for just sending markdown emails. They work fine as plain text, are future proof & any can easily be styled up an email client to fit with the rest of its design.

Always a shame to have to go full HTML email, just for some light formatting.

</comment><comment><USER85> Google's hostile attempt at taking over internet email is finally here.

There can be no doubt what they want now, and that Gmail as a platform is harmful to the internet at large.

If you haven't already, migrate today. There's plenty of good options out there.

</comment><comment><USER86> Being able to respond to a doodle pool directly from an email is awesome! But the number of those use cases will be dwarfed by marketing companies that abuse these feature to track people even more.

</comment><comment><USER34> Dont know about others, but that demo of making comments on Google Docs sold it for me. Time and again, I click on email notifications just to respond to comments. This makes it very convenient.

</comment><comment><USER87> This reminds me a lot of Google Wave. While I have my concerns about a format brought by Google (who may be defining a bit too much of the web these days), adding richness to emails will be refreshing. As long as we keep the idea that a message is something that will not change and be accessible as long as we can access our inbox, I'm all in for improvements. I just hope it evolves into something beyond Google's control.

</comment><comment><USER88> Maybe I'm just in the HN bubble, but it seems AMP is pretty unpopular. I've found numerous requests online asking how to disable it from others, though again, only anecdotal.

Is it unpopular? Or are most users ambivalent? And if it is unpopular why does Google continually try and push it?

Edit: grammatical mistakes

<comment><USER67> most users only care about speed, amp gives them that speed. voila, they keep using google - "coz it's fast".

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> I've switched to Fastmail and DuckDuckGo away from Google services. Definitely the right choice.

</comment><comment><USER90> I'll predict it here first: European Commission will be fining google about this in 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER91> AMP for email is indeed a terrible idea. Google made Gmail extremely slow with latest facelift. The only reason I can see if for Google et al to show ads (impressions vs clicks).

</comment><comment><USER92> Does anyone really need this? Email is already a prime security threat and attack angle- now you can get phished from within the mail app. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER93> Wow, I'm already looking forward to more flashy, blinking, nagging, unsolicited spam from booking.com in my mailbox. Thanks Google!

</comment><comment><USER94> If you work for an Alphabet company please quit.

</comment><comment><USER95> Which AMP components are actually supported? The spec isn't rendering correctly and none of the links seem to work.

<comment><USER25> The full list of supported AMP components is here: [https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/learn/amp...](https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and- tutorials/learn/amp-email-format.html?format=email)

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> So presumably I can assume any email using amp is a campaign and just move it straight out of my inbox?

</comment><comment><USER97> Hmmmm. As long as this is restricted to very simple functionality, it seems fine to me. What I don't want is my emails taking 3 seconds to load because some random AMP component I don't need has to load. Also I think they are aware about the static permanence issue... Hope they have a good solution to that.

</comment><comment><USER98> If you're using gmail personally it's time to up sticks.

</comment><comment><USER99> Maybe I got old already, but this looks like a horrible idea.

</comment><comment><USER100> Whelp, time to finally migrate to Startmail or Protonmail...

</comment><comment><USER101> Email should be plain text, anything else is overkill. :)

</comment><comment><USER102> Google trying to present whole internet as part of their services: Chrome browser as gateway, then search (which also aggressive promote Chrome) and Youtube/Blogger/Maps/News/etc.

</comment><comment><USER103> well say goodbye to the idea of email being a distributed protocol. centralization for the win

</comment><comment><USER104> OK, that's it. I'm not paying for this crap anymore. Which email providers do you guys recommend? Zoho? Rackspace?

<comment><USER105> Runbox is great, although I'm not an email power user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> this sounds like consilient from the dotcom daze. wow that was a long ass time ago.

</comment><comment><USER107> What prevents a sender from changing the content of an email? If none, the legal ramifications would be scary.

</comment><comment><USER108> Someone should start a movement for open-standards compliant interactive email using CSS hacks

<comment><USER109> I'd rather we just don't have "interactive email".

<comment><USER108> Google's gonna jump on it no matter if we like it or not. And if Google jumps on it and succeeds to make it popular all businesses will jump on it. And before you know it, Google owns HTML email (which will then be all AMP).

I understand your concerns but think about it: In 5 years time would you rather have emails that are as broken as today's web pages or emails that are as broken as today's web pages AND controlled by Google?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> ELI5 Why is this bad?

</comment><comment><USER111> > ...get their work done faster

precisely :)

work! work! work! work! work! work...

</comment><comment><USER23> God help us all.

<comment><USER112> Jesus Christ, it's Google's AMP!

AMP is the Jason Bourne of the web developer world... it could be the end of us all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> I find the level of hate for AMP to be about on par with the hate for Comic Sans circa 2005.

It's at the stage that you meet people who love to hate it without even knowing why that hate it, that it is almost fashionable to hate it. Then those that do have a reason to hate it, always have their own reason. With no consensus reason for hating it. Though I'm noticing an increase of "Google" being the reason they give.

But then people love to hate, back when IBM was top dog - people loved to hate them, then Microsoft, and today, well today Google seems to get more hate than Microsoft these days. That's not saying Google did anything wrong, or Microsoft did anything right. If anything, people love to hate whoever is sitting at the top and today in the public's eye - that's Google. Not saying they are right, or wrong.

But clearly - the people's level of hate does seem to correlate with any large company attaining a overly dominant position. Just kinda fascinating to see the same patterns play out over time.

<comment><USER23> > It's at the stage that you meet people who love to hate it without even > knowing why that hate it

I don't love to hate it. I just hate it, and I can tell you why -- it's a one- two punch of AMP pages being generally inferior to the real pages, and Google interposing itself between me and the website.

<comment><USER113> I think you've nailed it - people hate having choices removed from them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't think subj will be adopted for normal correspondence. It will be used only for marketing emails. I will not be spending time encoding AMP to write to somebody.

</comment><comment><USER49> What the Inventor Of Email Has to say about this? I hope he'll sue Google, let him know. [https://vashiva.com](https://vashiva.com)

</comment><comment><USER114> Ok gang, let's see who's behind this...

 _takes off the mask to reveal Google Buzz_

</comment><comment><USER115> Google is really purposefully trying to piss people off

</comment><comment><USER116> I have a well developed curmudgeonly streak I confess, but the first AMP email I receive from any person or organisation will be the last I open from them.

</comment><comment><USER117> Email is actively dying and being replaced by closed alternatives (Messenger, Slack, etc) and any effort by any company to keep it alive should be applauded, including this one.

That being said I can't imagine a scenario where AMP in email is anything but annoying.

<comment><USER118> I still can find emails in my mailbox that I've sent or received 10 or 15 years ago while on the other hand I have pretty big issues with finding the exact message I sent on FB Messenger only a day ago (it involves lots of scrolling), never mind a couple of years (Skype presents the the same issue for me). I guess Slack behaves the same way as FB Messenger (I haven't personally used it).

<comment><USER117> Yes, this is why we need to support email. You can list its advantages all day long but if people don't check their email (or don't even have an email account), then it will be useless and that's the direction we're headed.

<comment><USER23> I don't agree that's the direction we're headed. But if it is, and if something like AMP is what's needed to "save" it, that result is the same as it being dead for me, personally.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Backpage Raided, CEO Arrested on Sex-Trafficking Charges - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/backpage-raided-ceo-arrested-texas-42630540 <comment><USER2> Why is it that in such cases, the government reaches for the CEO right away; but when Wells Fargo employees open millions of fraudulent accounts, it's not the CEO's fault? If I were to commit identity theft (which is basically what the WF employees did), then I would be facing jail time; why hasn't anyone in WF been charged with criminal fraud yet? Why not the CEO?

<comment><USER3> You're comparing apples and oranges. The CEO of a small internet company almost certainly has a hand in everything the company does. The CEO of a large corporation has no idea what the line workers are doing.[1] If a bunch of Yahoo employees had gone off and run as sex-trafficking site off Yahoo's servers, they wouldn't go arrest Marissa Mayer. Not because "lobbying" but because that would be stupid and unreasonable.

[1] I've done internal investigations at megacorps. When something shady goes down with line employees they hire teams of lawyers _just to tell management what the heck is going on_ inside their own company.

<comment><USER4> You are talking about 5,000 current employees being fired and many employees who were fired for reporting it. If he didn't know, then he must not know other things about Wells Fargo that are equally important.

<comment><USER5> > You are talking about 5,000 current employees being fired and many employees > who were fired for reporting it. If he didn't know, then he must not know > other things about Wells Fargo that are equally important.

I'm sure that's the case, and I'm sure it's also the case for most CEOs of massive companies.

Wells Fargo has more than 250,000 employees and more than 6000 branches -- more branches than any other US bank. There is nobody who knows everything that is going on. It's just not possible.

The number of employees fired represents a tiny fraction of the total number of employees -- about 2% or less.

<comment><USER6> Then how does this spread around to all the branches if (way) upper management doesn't know? Does Suzy in Fl really spend her time chatting up Jackie in CA to get the scoop on all the D/L ways to cheat? They have a little IRC channel for duping WF management?

<comment><USER7> Have you ever had a job? Have you ever had management insist upon some stupid metric or some deadline that just could not be met and they refused to hear about it?

People had to open new accounts or lose their jobs. Some people opened fake accounts to accomplish this. When they were found out, they were fired. Sounds like a horrible place to work, but the firings were proof that management didn't want this to happen, not some bizarro proof that this is what they wanted all along.

You don't need coordination to figure out how to game a system.

<comment><USER4> This is not quite right. They were pressured by managers to open fake accounts, fired for not making quotas if not, fired if they reported the practice, and then all fired once the government finds out and it blows up. Of course the senior management plays dumb and keeps their jobs.

<comment><USER7> They were not "all fired, once the government found out."

 _Wells Fargo confirmed to CNNMoney that it had fired 5,300 employees over the last few years related to the shady behavior. Employees went so far as to create phony PIN numbers and fake email addresses to enroll customers in online banking services, the CFPB said._

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo- create...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/investing/wells-fargo-created- phony-accounts-bank-fees/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FWIW, this headline is not completely accurate. The story itself says further down the page, "Ferrer was arrested on felony charges of pimping a minor, pimping, and conspiracy to commit pimping." None of these are actually trafficking charges; they're run-of-the-mill prostitution charges.

There's also a story from a young girl who was forced into sex work, which is certainly awful, and some stuff about studies and claims of sex trafficking, but there's a clickbait factor to the headline. There are a variety of new state and federal laws on sex trafficking which were passed in recent years, and nobody associated with Backpage has been charged under any of them, afaict.

<comment><USER9> and it was based on a few reports of minors, who paid for ads on backpage.com, and that the sin was backpage.com took their money and should have known they were minors somehow. Out of millions of ads posted annually, they should have known that those three women were underage. Even after they checked the "I am 18" box.

Bad backpage. Or maybe someone is trying to get headlines on how they are tough on crime. Because elections.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure backpage has been on LE radar at least since CL shuttered their adult services section. It's pretty widely known as a site used to hire prostitutes, those three women were probably more representative than you think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This was no more a prostitution website than Craigslist, before Craigslist struck a deal with attorney generals of several states to shut down its Adult Classifieds section [1]. In fact, given Craigslist scale it had many more prostitution (and probably child prostitution) ads. The question is: why Craig and this CEO were given such disparate treatment? Because the times have changed, or because Craigslist was much bigger and an arrest of Craig would have unleashed a huge wave of rage from free speech supporters as a violation of the principles of Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act, since classifieds sites are republishers, rather than publishers of content and should not be responsible for the classifieds content.

1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/16craigslist.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/16craigslist.html) :

"The sex ads cost $10 and were on track to bring in $44 million in revenue this year, according to the AIM Group, a consulting firm that closely monitors the company. Craigslist also charges for some real estate and job ads, but most listings are free"

<comment><USER12> Probably because Craig'slist also have a sizable business in other areas not related.

<comment><USER13> It's certainly easier to start with groups who only participate in activities which are uncomfortable to publicly defend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even if you are morally opposed to prostitution, is there really any benefit to authorities when you remove a centralized location and move it to the street or many different websites? If you really want to manage the prostitution "problem", having it all on a single website seems like a benefit for managing and researching the issue.

<comment><USER15> Most sex workers agree that their safety is improved dramatically by having the business side of it out in the open. And, there have been studies on sex worker safety that indicate strongly that legal prostitution is safer for everyone; it also reduces coercion when it is not underground (women don't need a pimp, if law enforcement is on their side).

Since I started paying attention a few years ago, I've noticed that most commentary from law enforcement and politicians on the subject of prostitution frames it as "human trafficking" or just "trafficking", even when there were no non-consenting parties involved (and nearly all prostitution is between consenting adults). It is misleading, unethical, and actively harmful to the safety of the people they're claiming to help, but, they do it anyway. The implication that someone is being forced into sexual slavery makes them seem like the good guys in the story...when, in reality, they're _mostly_ just harassing and imprisoning poor women who are making an honest living the best way they know how.

Of _course_ no one wants to see children being sexually abused. No one wants to see children or otherwise at-risk people forced into prostitution. But, that's already illegal; they don't have to victimize all sex workers to pursue and prosecute those crimes.

The kicker here is that the police found these kids who had been forced into sexual slavery because of the ads on this site. Had it been completely underground, they wouldn't have found them, wouldn't have been able to set up a sting, and wouldn't have been able to get the girls out of a dangerous and abusive situation. Now, it goes further underground, where the risk is even higher.

<comment><USER16> There's idealism on both sides of the argument.

On one hand, there are those who believe that conducting these arrangements in the open is safer for all involved parties.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that sex work can never truly be consensual, because even if consent is given, a sex worker may have felt pressured to seek this life because all other choices available to them to make a living and attain food and shelter were sub-par or nonexistent. This argument supposes that given a different, idealized circumstances free of such pressures, few people would choose sex work.

I find this argument very similar to the idea of age of consent, in which society declares that people below a certain age are incapable of informed consent, and similarly, the widespread societal taboo against suicide, which implicitly suggests that no rational person free of undue pressures would consent to ending their own life, therefore anyone who commits suicide was pushed to do so by serious factors that impaired their ability to properly consent.

Finally, there are those who just want to be 'tough on crime', and actions like this fit the bill at first blush, while letting it operate would be construed by the same population as inaction.

<comment><USER17> > there are those who believe that sex work can never truly be > consensual...idealized circumstances free of such pressures, few people > would choose sex work

In idealized circumstances free of economic pressures many of us would spent all day at the beach. It's great many found their dream career and are getting paid to do what they love. But for most what work is just work, a means to an end. Not sure why sex workers should be especially singled out and stigmatized. Would the janitor who cleaned the toilets in your office be doing that if they weren't getting paid to? Would you even be in said office if you weren't getting paid to be there?

<comment><USER18> No one should feel shame at having a toilet at the office and needing to pay someone to help clean it.

Everyone should feel shame at coercing a person who would otherwise not have sex with them into having sex with them. Buying someone's labor is different than buying their bodily autonomy and consent to sex.

<comment><USER19> You have a strange definition of "coercing"

This isnt rape, it's just paying for an exchange. If a person doesn't want to use their body, they're free not to. Manual labor also involves using your body with wear and tear, it's not that different or special.

<comment><USER18> If that's the fiction you need to tell yourself to avoid feeling shame at condoning the use of prostitutes, I guess I can't really stop you.

<comment><USER20> The sex workers don't care about your morals. They have different morals than you and care about different things. Stop telling them and other people what morals they should have.

Regulated prostitution may be bad in your eyes but unregulated prostitution is even worse for those who are already in this industry.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

<comment><USER18> We have a perfectly good approach already; it's called the Nordic model. Arrest johns, not prostitutes.

And there are thousands of former sex workers that will give you an earful about what you think you know about prostitution and what prostitutes think.

<comment><USER21> Ah, the Nordic model... The country in the middle bans prostitution and offloads it to the neighboring countries. I have yet to see any macro advantage on it, besides a little reduction and a lot of smug people feeling better about themselves.

A while ago I spent quite some time researching the prostitution thing, trying to make up my mind about it. I remember the UN report on global trafficking[1] being specially enlightening. The conclusions I took from it:

-Prohibition doesn't work. It just drives the prostitution underground, and as the pimps are already doing something illegal they don't mind going the extra mile, make it straightforward slavery and abuse the women so much than they are too terrified to escape. A small country (like Sweden) can offload the prostitution to nearby countries, but if all Europe were to do that the consequences would probably be really dire for a lot of women.

-Full legality increases human trafficking. As there is a lot of legal prostitution going on, it's easier to get away with the trafficking. In Europe usually takes the shape of organized crime importing awful lot of women from western Europe to Holland and Germany. Long term, it's thought to increase the well being of prostitutes, both imported and local, but we still have to grok how to do it without make it without the traffic.

-Not legal nor illegal. This is the situation in most countries, and the implementations vary wildly. In some countries the police does not intervene at all and it's a cesspool of mafias fighting for control, others make it a tourist attraction, while others haven't made it legal but don't prosecute the prostitutes. Curiously enough, this last approach is the one that gets the best results at stopping exploitative human trafficking as long as pimping is really prosecuted, don't remember anyone really explaining why. My guess is that in this situation large scale trafficking operations stand out much more, but who knows.

TL;DR; It's hard. Swedes are a tiny bit hypocrites in this one.

[1] [http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global- repor...](http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/global-report-on- trafficking-in-persons.html)

<comment><USER22> Indeed just having one region legalize skyrockets trafficking. Prices also go down, so prostitution becomes less attractive to locals as a way to make money which means foreigners in poor countries have to be imported, which leads to trafficking rings. Vice claims of the 500k prostitutes in Germany two-third's are foreign [http://www.vice.com/read/a-visit-to-one-of-germanys-all- you-...](http://www.vice.com/read/a-visit-to-one-of-germanys-all-you-can-fuck- brothels-432)

It's extremely difficult to stop gangsters from trafficking because they operate in the trafficked persons home country as well, so if you run to the police in Germany or Canada they can seek retribution on your family members back home in Ukraine, Vietnam ect. Thus the not legal nor illegal does a good balance of preventing super brothels opening up full of imported sex workers while at the same time being able to arrest pimps without relying on the testimony of the sex workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Instagram, Snapchat and Tumblr are full of escort ads, so is 'fetlife' which is basically a prositution social media site for people in that scene. Then there's all the porn sites with escorts uploading videos of themselves like XVideos and shilling their services. Nobody is going after Instagram's CEO for allowing #gfe or #(city)escort hashtags.

Backpages seemed like a good police tool in that they could entrap politically connected people with fake prostitution ads, and they could identify organized prositution more easily. For example here it was simple to find the gangster listings running microbrothels, these are condos rented by street gangs who import girls from Asia, seize their passports and pimp them out. These gangs were also well known to rob each other's micros, and there are plenty of stories on all those escort review forums of armed gangsters kicking down the door and jacking the place since police won't be called.

Selective law enforcement again happening here so the Backpages CEO guy must have made political statements advocating for legalization or was politically active in some other way. It's my main theory why Redbook was shutdown, because they entertained very loud activists in their forums calling for legalization who often called out city and state politicians directly. Reminder if you want to run an illegal business don't be politically active and you can operate under the radar like Fetlife with it's thousands of escort ads.

</comment><comment><USER23> With hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year, I guess they should have donated more to the relevant Attorney Generals' campaign funds. My best wishes to all of the victims in this article.

</comment><comment><USER24> Question: If Bernie Madoff had advertised his pyramid scheme in, say, the New York Times, can the paper be held responsible for subsequent losses suffered by those who took up the offer made in the advert?

Is this case legally similar, or do the specific crimes of human trafficking make it different? You know, sort of like how contracts are ordinarily enforceable, but if I agree to marry off my 12-year-old daughter to you, that "contract" is not enforceable.

<comment><USER19> The basic rule is contracts cannot override the law.

<comment><USER25> The real question is: to what degree are providers of platforms (such as ad agencies and newspapers that publish ads) responsible for checking the lawfulness of the content that is published through them?

And is it consistent for the different kinds of platform?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't understand what that CEO did? He just runs classified ads website how is he a pimp? Why is he responsible for other people actions on his website? Is this just a show or he is really in a trouble? This doesn't sound like a free country.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wish there were a good way to separate out coerced or human trafficking (which I believe is less common in the medium to high end US prostitution market) from the morally objectionable stuff. Arguably the way to do that is by providing a "clean" alternative, either "good"/safe/consensual prostitution, or just really high quality vr/robotic/immersive porn. It's really hard for me to find fault with someone deciding to have sex with other adults for $200-500+/hr vs. working in a slaughterhouse or call center or something for $8-15/hr.

</comment><comment><USER28> > One of the advertisers, identified only as 15-year-old "E.S.," ''was forced > into prostitution at the age of 13 by her pimp," according to an affidavit > filed with the complaint. She used other online advertising services until > they were shut down, the court filing says, when she turned to Backpage.

This reads horribly: the feds took down multiple sites and knew about this 15-year-old, but didn't manage to reach her in the process?

<comment><USER29> It was my impression that sites like Backpage were massive "honey pots" that feds and local law enforcement used to contain and frequently thwart illicit activities such as prostitution. It seems like they are taken down at arbitrary times afterwards either after their usefulness as a law enforcement mechanism has diminished and, slight tin foil hat here, whenever an agency needs a "big bust" for political purposes. Go figure many are hurt in the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is the distinction between this page and the kind of things posted on craigslist, strictly that the posters had to pay to list their ads? Or do prostitutes not post on craigslist? AFAIK Newmark hasn't had to deal with any of this.

I'd be interested to know if there is something similar and legal in countries that allow prostitution (Netherlands?). Seems like they were making a lot of revenue for what is basically illegal ads - so a legal version would do even better I would imagine. Though I suppose the pricing would drop if it were legal.

<comment><USER31> I posted a new thread w/ the NYT link [1], [2] because it had this helpful tidbit:

 _A congressional investigation this year found that the website changed some of its adult classifieds to conceal the fact that the advertisements were for sex acts with minors. Mr. Ferrer was subpoenaed by a Senate subcommittee last fall to answer questions about reported child sex-trafficking ads, but he did not show up._

Found to be covering up child sex trafficking by Congress and you just blow them off and don't change anything? That's the point where getting arrested shouldn't be much of a surprise.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/carl-ferrer-backpage- ce...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/carl-ferrer-backpage-ceo-is- arrested.html) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12658053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12658053)

<comment><USER32> The website changed some of its adult clasifieds to conceal the fact that they were for sex acts with minors, or the people posting them changed them? Because one of these seems an awful lot more likely than the other, and I don't see how Congress could honestly have determined that the site itself did it. I _suspect_ that someone's arguing that banning adverts for child sex is in fact concealing them because people work around the bans, but it's hard to find any information on the actual basis of this claim.

Of note, it also seems that Backpage did report suspected child sex trafficking to the NCMEC, based on a statement by the NCMEC to Congress in 2015.[1] This appears to have been one of the things used against them, with the congressional reports mentioning the large proportion of reports that involved Backpage as proof that they were a child sex trafficking ring while omitting that they were the ones doing the reporting.

[1] [http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/?id=B087F957-02BD-4F58-...](http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/?id=B087F957-02BD-4F58-8CFA-C47B42271928)

<comment><USER33> Congressional comments from when Backpage was held in contempt:

> Our investigation showed that Backpage "edits" advertisements before posting > them, by removing certain words, phrases, or images. For instance, they > might remove a word or image that makes clear that sexual services are being > offered for money. And then they would post this "sanitized" version of the > ad. While this editing changes nothing about the underlying transaction, it > tends to conceal the evidence of illegality. In other words, Backpage's > editing procedures, far from being an effective anti-trafficking measure, > only served to sanitize the ads of illegal content to an outside viewer.

Turns out NCMEC showed up for the hearing that Backpage skipped, and didn't have many nice things to say about Backpage.

> "You see, it is sometimes hard to square Backpage's public statements about > its business practices with the reality on the ground. For example, the > National Center recently was searching for a child who went missing – and is > still missing – and found that she appeared in a sex advertisement on > Backpage. That is sadly common. But what made this case even more incredible > was that the Backpage ad actually contained a missing child poster of that > same child. That poster had the child's real name, real age, real picture, > and the date she went missing. The other pictures in the ad included topless > photos. We'd certainly like to know what supposedly market-leading screening > and moderation procedures missed that one.

[https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/me...](https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/senate- passes-portman-resolution-to-hold-backpagecom-in-contempt-of-congress)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm confused and I'm not a lawyer. Isn't this interstate commerce and therefore the purview of federal authorities? Why is CA leading a felony investigation for a supposed crime that happened over the Internet?

</comment><comment><USER35> It's important to understand that this arrest is happening in concert with a major operation to disrupt sex trafficking rings outside of Backpage specifically.

[http://www.startribune.com/feds-to-announce-bust-of- global-s...](http://www.startribune.com/feds-to-announce-bust-of-global-sex- ring/395996911/)

Neither article mentions specific coordination, but considering the arrests happened on the same day, I'm imagining that there must have been some coordination in the investigations.

</comment><comment><USER36> As someone who recently built a project ([http://www.aphex.cx/iconoclast-a- child-prostitution-hunter/](http://www.aphex.cx/iconoclast-a-child- prostitution-hunter/)) to find this exact stuff, I'm glad to see action taken against Backpage. Pimping kids out should be hard.

<comment><USER37> how does that work?

<comment><USER38> One of the sections in his post is literally "how does it work"..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The first definition of "pimping" they provide, "making money off of prostitutes", seems to encompass anything from a gas station allowing the corner whores to buy cigarettes to an NGO with a grant for "rescuing" them.

</comment><comment><USER40> If BP goes down, this is a huge opportunity for another site. Just like it was for BP when CL closed their section. Who is positioned to fill the void?

</comment><comment><USER41> The real criminals are the people making prostitution illegal

</comment><comment><USER42> There really is only one appropriate solution for this and that is universal basic income.

<comment><USER43> This _really_ ignores the reality of sex trafficking. Sure, sometimes you become a prostitute because you need money for you or your family, but much of the time it's against your will[See 1, page 13 PP 3]. A universal basic income will not solve that. A UBI may help a prostitute get out of their profession, because many do want to leave and money is a large concern[See 1, page 14 PP 1], but that still ignores other issues such as health issues e.g. STDs and addiction to drugs.

1: See [https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238796.pdf](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238796.pdf)

<comment><USER44> Is there any source for your partition estimation?</comment></comment></comment>


Blog Incorrectly Gets Labeled as a 'Content Farm' by Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.labnol.org/internet/blog-as-content-farm/18750/ <comment><USER2> I don't want to be mean, but, I just read through several articles on that site, and regardless of weather or not it is a content farm it feels a little like one. That is to say we can't know what the Google algorithm is doing for sure but it's safe to say it isn't able know what a site authors true intentions are. So while the author probably means well I won't be to heart broken that this particular site will be a little further down in the Google ranking; farm or not.

<comment><USER3> I also thought it was very low quality content.

        Tutorial: "How to use Drop Box to back up your files"
        Instructions: Save your files to your drop box folder

        Tutotial: "How to host your website on amazon S3"
        Instructions: Save your files to S3 and point a web browser at them.

I feel like "Content Farm" is putting it nicely.

<comment><USER4> If the content is of such low quality, why couldn't you find a couple of examples that could support your point without having to grossly misrepresent them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't see how this Blog isn't a 'Content Farm'? The site is full of low quality click driven articles - Nothing wrong with it, I'm guilty too. But its nieve to think that you can drive a product and profit off a search engine algorithm.

<comment><USER6> But hey if your running a not so well known blog and are trying to get traffic, why not write an article saying you were unfairly targeted by Google. Overall this is a current hot topic, might as well try turn this current zeitgeist into a win for your blog or website(gain more traffic & readers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How much is "tons" ? If only articles that are linked then that's about 200. I don't know how many articles there are in total in this blog but it looks like there are between 1800 to 18000. Thus original content is between 1% and 10%. Of course I might be wrong and I will leave anyone to give correct information but not my rough estimates made in 1 minute. At the moment I see it as content farm with some original content.

</comment><comment><USER8> Two points to note:

1\. All major Google algo changes (that I know of, at least since 2003/4) have almost always caused _collateral damage_. Many times, they have kind of _turned back the knobs_ somewhat later to reduce the extent of such damage.

2\. Given the size of their index, a major algo change can take up to weeks to stabilise; things might still be in a state of _flux_ and what you're observing now just might not be permanent.

I'd not give up hope just yet and give it some more time before drawing any finite conclusions. In the meanwhile, one would just have to bite the bitter bullet in terms of revenue loss. :-(

</comment><comment><USER9> It is funny how all content farms say they aren't content farms and that their content is 'high quality'.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not saying its not the case that the blog got incorrectly labeled, but 1 week of sample data is probably not enough to draw any valid conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER11> google changed its ranking algo, some sites loose, some sites win. if the site is a "content farm" or not is pretty much irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER12> TheFind.com gets labelled content farm. Its a product search engine, direct competitor of Google Products.</comment>


Drupal developers wanted. Pay rate: $10-$12/hr - <AUTHOR>

Just thought I'd forward this wage scale for a recent job opening to give readers an idea of what the programmer job market is like outside of San Mateo:
Hourly Rates (Introduction):
Intern $10-$12 / hour
IC $12-15 / hour
Hourly Rates (Experienced with Drupal Theming):
Intern $15-$18/ hour
IC $18-$20 / hour
Translation: Intern == student, IC == independent contractor. Location? This is in the San Francisco Bay Area. Suffice it to say that things are different on the other side of the GGB.
I won't say who's hiring because I don't need the competition. I'm asking for $15/hr. Wish me luck. <comment><USER2> I also hear that In-n-Out(burger chain in California) pays $11/hour plus benefits and vacation for a job that requires no previous skills (flipping burgers. The reason companies like this exist, is because people think, "Because I was able to teach myself, my skills can't be worth that much". No surprise they are looking for interns so they can get cheap wages, but I doubt they will follow through with the teaching them part of the deal. The Independent Contractor part is equally amusing, cause after all the taxes, you'd be better off working for In-n-Out

</comment><comment><USER3> Those numbers seem awfully low, especially for the Bay Area. You could make $11-13 flipping burgers at In-N-Out with a lot less stress and more free food.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's low even for around here. They were asking for students, though, so low wages can be expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is no way someone with adequate computer skills, let alone programming skills can only find a job for $15 an hour in the Bay Area.

</comment><comment><USER5> I own one of the larger Drupal agencies in the US with offices in SF. Those rates are totally below market, even for trainees!

</comment><comment><USER6> I am an intern making $20 dollars an hour with little experience.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's super low. Even for Florida!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A follow-up from the company's autoresponder:

We are in the midst of reviewing all submissions and will contact chosen candidates during the week of June 8th to schedule an interview. Due to the number of applications, only those we wish to interview with will be contacted. If you have not heard from us by 4pm on Monday June 11th please assume the position has been filled.

To my knowledge, the opening was announced last week.</comment>


Draw.io: Flowchart Maker / Visio Online - <AUTHOR> http://draw.io <comment><AUTHOR> I know this has been submitted previously, but they are constantly updating it and it is a really amazing piece of software.</comment>


How To Succeed On Wall Street Without Trying, Like, At All  - <AUTHOR> http://dealbreaker.com/2011/09/what-wall-street-can-learn-from-one-penn-undergrad/

<comment><USER2> succeed = sending an email? some people have low ambitions, and distorted views on what success is</comment>


Find Out if You're a Target in the Biggest U.S. BitTorrent Lawsuit Ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/bittorrent-lawsuit-checker/

<comment><USER2> Want to know if you're involved? Did you download The Expendables? If so, seek both legal and psychological support. If not, happy torrenting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Being afraid of something like this is a good reason to start using Netflix. You have to wait for the disc to get to you, but than you can just rip and watch it later. Or use newsgroups I guess.

<comment><USER4> My son wanted to see some Wizard movie with Nic Cage in it. Through Tivo I forked over $2 and was informed we had 48hrs to watch it before our rental expired. We managed to do that. That was last month.

This month, I'm browsing through my Netflix immediate-watchable list and what do I see? Yeah, that Nic Cage movie.

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Replaced my IP with 22.214.171.124 in the paste below

      mike@gum:~$ lynx --dump http://admintools.wired.com:8080/lawsuit_app/check.php
         {"suits":[],"ip":"22.214.171.124","guilty":"false"}

      mike@gum:~$

</comment><comment><USER5> Retroshare, friend to friend encrypted p2p filesharing, chat, and distributed forums.

<http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how many of these we will see before people started using anonymous prepaid VISA credit cards to purchase non-logging VPN subscriptions from internet cafes, and then used these VPNs to do downloading.

I imagine trying to track that down would be placed into the too-hard basket.

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't there some US case law that discredits presenting IP addresses as evidence of identity? Anyone know?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here: [http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not-a-person- bittorrent-c...](http://torrentfreak.com/ip-address-not-a-person-bittorrent- case-judge-says-110503/)

<comment><USER8> Now if only the rulings of the District Court in the Central District of Illinois applied to US federal law. (I'm not a lawyer, and I have no idea how things like that work.) Regardless, I've come to expect such little consistency from the law.

<comment><USER9> I haven't read the judgment but I would think that the judgment can act as a precedence unless there is a rider associated with it. This probably probably has nothing to do with Federal/State law. The courts are generally very specific about consistency in different judgments.

IANAL but just finished a course on cyberlaw and I remember something about little knowledge and things that are dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't use torrents anymore, but there was a time when I did, and I would probably be on this list. Not sure they want to pick a fight with 23k people.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I remember the hullabaloo about some shitty movie about bomb squads in Iraq last year as well. 5000 in that case. Funnily enough, I did dl that one and noticed it shares one major fact with the Expendables -- shitty movie suing pirates. Like someone said earlier, this is turning into a pretty nice biz model, considering how many must lose their shit and settle for whatever outrageous fee on receiving the scary letter in the mail.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. I expected not to be blown away, but wow was it horrid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The top 10 torrents for movie The Expendables on thepiratebay.org still have a total of 4595 seeders, 500 leechers. Healthy numbers, I wonder if they'll drop dramatically over the next couple of weeks.

</comment><comment><USER13> This would make an amazing honeypot.

<comment><USER14> In what way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think I'll be giving Wired my IP. The lawsuit probably has a 'guilty conscience' clause and I'll be added just for thinking that I might be involved.

<comment><USER16> They know your IP just by visiting their site.

<comment><USER15> It is joke. When there is bad news, some people make light. It helps them cope with reality.</comment></comment></comment>